The shipwreck of grieving

Can a painter travel lightly across the land?

I haven’t been posting much lately, because I’ve been painting! Painting and traveling.

We took a trip to Chicago in the spring. Despite the Chicagoan’s fanstasies that the weather was springlike, it was a bitterly cold city. (Where I’m from, we complain when we have to put socks on in the winter. Any temperature under 59 degrees F., and I’m done.)

It was also a city where, I was advised, we wouldn’t need a car, since the public transportation is epically transportational.

What? No car? I’m a person who chooses automobiles based on the amount of nooks and crannies on the passenger side. When I travel, I need a rolling art studio. I paint while my husband drives.

The best car I ever used was a Dodge van we rented for a camping trip. Cubbies in the door held paintbrushes, pencils, and pens at the ready; 4 drink holders between the front seats kept steady two cups of water and two cups of coffee; the deep, wide dashboard displayed paintings that were not yet dry; and the open door of the glove box made the perfect mobile easel.

You can imagine how much stuff I brought on that (or any) camping trip. Several sketchbooks, a folder of watercolor paper, a couple of Arches watercolor blocks, and a lined notebook. I even brought the laptop and Wacom tablet.

But in Chicago, traveling by bus and subway, I had to pare down. Way down.

Homemade travel journal

What you see in the photo above is what I came up with.

I’m not a book binder, so I couldn’t stitch together anything fancy; instead I cut to size a variety of papers: Strathmore drawing paper, BFK Rives printing paper (tan colored), and Arches 300-lb cold and hot press papers.

Then I got the local copy shop to drill holes in the paper. They couldn’t—or wouldn’t—move the bits on their drill, so I was lucky my notebook fit in the 8.5-inch slot on the paper-drilling machine.

They wouldn’t drill the covers. They said, what the h*ll is this stuff? It was merely illustration board covered with acrylic gesso, but I guess it looked like some strange building material to them. I had to drill those with my trusty hand drill (it used to belong to my grandfather. It’s probably 60 years old, and still works like a champ.)

The paper was all held together with binder rings.

It was perfect for the trip. I could paint or draw on whatever type paper I wanted that day. I didn’t have to work sequentially, because at the end of the day I could reorder the paper as I liked. And to reduce weight (and protect the already painted pages), I would only bring part of the journal each day as I shivered my way around Chicago.

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The bird on this blog

My mother passed away in the last hours of 2016. Sometimes when life hurts too much, I need to write and share. This year, that's what I'm doing. I'm warning you, at least for the foreseeable future, this blog will be about loss and how to deal with it.

If you want happiness, painting tips, and pleasant nattering, visit my website, www.Margaretsloan.com. I promise, there won't be a lot of sadness there.